Germany

THE NEW WAVE

In the 1960s a young generation of West Germans began to reject the
filmmaking of their parents (and even grandparents), as they were
beginning to reject many of the premises on which their parents had
reestablished their version of Germany. In 1962 a group of young
film-makers published the
Oberhausen Manifesto
at the festival in the town of that name. They wanted a radical shift in
Filmkultur
to recognize cinema as an art equivalent to other arts and thus equally
deserving of public support. The Young German Film sought new forms of
expression while looking back to prewar cinematic traditions. It embraced
American popular culture while criticizing much of American politics,
particularly internationally. It turned to German literature for
inspiration while rejecting notions of high and low culture and
consciously stressing an auteur cinema.

The German state responded by expanding support agencies, subsidies, and
training institutions. The Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film (Board for
Young German Film) offered, from 1964 on, interest-free loans to
screenplays found worthy of support, yet first-time filmmakers still found
it difficult to find distribution and exhibition. Established industry
circles countered by securing loans from the Filmförderungsanstalt
for companies demonstrating box-office success, which led to a flurry of
cheap, often sensationalist productions. The new generation's films
began to appear in 1966 with
Abschied von gestern
(
Yesterday Girl
) by Alexander Kluge (b. 1932), a film-essay challenging genre cinema with
a fragmented narrative and a critique of social norms. Volker
Schlöndorff (b. 1939) began his literary adaptations with his
Der junge Törless
(
Young Torless
, 1966) based on the famous novella by Robert Musil (1880–1942).
Social realist, even documentary style went together with experimental and
avant-garde developments and a wide-ranging critical stance toward modern
mass culture and media. Jean-Marie Straub (b. 1933) and Danièle
Huillet (b. 1936) influenced their contemporaries, although they never
found a large audience, with films like
Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach
(
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach
, 1968), which refused narrative authority and examined the relationship
of time and space in film.

Parallel to these developments, mainline popular cinema carried on by
producing pop music films, low-level porn under the guise of social
comment on sexuality, detective stories, and even remakes of the Karl May
westerns. However, by the early 1970s, with new film-makers gaining
recognition overseas, cinema rapidly became one of Germany's
cultural export flagships under the title New German Cinema, and was then
validated by foreign opinion. German public identification with the new
wave—some even proudly hailed it as a new "Golden
Age"—was mixed with unease at the film-makers'
potential excesses. The generation of the early 1960s stressed the
Autorenfilm
(author's film) as pro-grammatic, as it privileged individual
creativity against commercial and industrial expertise. This meant that
filmmakers were not only their own directors but scriptwriters, producers,
and editors as well. In 1971 these filmmakers launched a short-lived
attempt to secure their own distribution by founding the Filmverlag der
Autoren, but it was never able to compete with mainline companies.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1946–1982) was by far the most prolific
and controversial filmmaker of this generation, with a formidable
productivity from the late 1960s to his early death in 1982. He was also
an important figure in radical German theater. His
Angst essen Seele auf
(
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
, 1974) is still provocative in its depiction of love between a
middle-aged German woman and an immigrant worker from North Africa. His
Chinesisches Roulette
(
Chinese Roulette
, 1976) offers remarkable shot compositions to support its melodrama, and
his
Lili Marleen
(1981) takes up the theme of Nazism through an examination of the way
Nazi media promoted a star cult. Probably his best-known film is
Die Ehe der Maria Braun
(
The Marriage of Maria Braun
, 1979), where his own "star" actress, Hanna Schygulla (b.
1943), portrays the career of a woman during the German "economic
miracle," displaying the sexual politics that paralleled
socioeconomic developments. With
Lola
(1981) and
Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss
(
Veronika Voss
, 1982),
The Marriage of Maria Braun
forms the "Trilogy of the Federal Republic," a tableau of
the history, politics, culture, and style of Fassbinder's homeland.

Wim Wenders (b. 1945) is internationally celebrated and engages in the
politics of
Filmkultur
. His
Im Laufe der Zeit
(
Kings of the Road
, 1976) set many of his thematic and stylistic trademarks, like his
fascination with American culture and the figure of the lone male wanderer
as hero, which resurfaced in his
Paris, Texas
(1984), made in the United States with French financing. After several
years in the United States (including a notable but flawed cooperation
with Francis Ford Coppola on
Hammett
, 1982), Wenders returned home and shot his masterpiece,
Der Himmel über Berlin
(
Wings of Desire
) in 1987, combining remarkable images from Berlin just before the Wall
collapsed with a mythical love story of an angel and the woman for whom he
forsakes immortality. Wenders returned to the United States to shoot
The Million Dollar Hotel
(2000), a bizarre detective story set in a rundown residential hotel in
Los Angeles. Applying his trademarks to an American cast in an American
setting, Wenders continues German cinema's tradition of interaction
with the United States and its filmmaking.
In a Land of Plenty
(2004) has its title borrowed from poet/songwriter Leonard Cohen, and
results from cooperation with US writers, producers, and cast on a US
theme: the continuing legacy of Vietnam. Technologically, Wenders also
broke new ground by shooting mainly digitally.
Don't Come Knocking
(2005) meant working with Sam Shepard again and with a US cast, including
Shepard himself, Tim Roth, and Jessica Lange. Its narrative resembles
Paris, Texas
in tracing the wanderings of a loner-male and his attempt to salvage his
disastrous family relations. Wenders has also cooperated with Ry Cooder,
on the documentary
Buena Vista Social Club
(1999), and with Martin Scorsese to contribute
The Soul of a Man
(2003) to Scorsese's TV series on the blues.

Werner Herzog (b. 1942) is regarded as one of the most eccentric figures
of
das neue kino
. His films feature inspiring landscapes and controversial actors (the
flamboyant Klaus Kinski [1926–1991], the strange Bruno S. [b.
1932]) at odds with their world. Herzog is also well known for the making
of his films, whether hypnotizing the entire cast in
Herz aus Glas
(
Heart of Glass
, 1976), dragging a boat through the Amazon jungle for
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes
(
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
, 1972), or feuding with actor Kinski. Other significant figures from this
generation are Volker Schlöndorff, whose Oscar
®
winning adaptation of Günter Grass's novel
Die Blechtrommel
(
The Tin Drum
, 1979) is a remarkable treatment of a powerful exploration of German
identity, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg (b. 1935), whose
Ludwig, Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König
(
Ludwig, Requiem for a Virgin King
, 1972) and
Hitler—ein Film aus Deutschland
(
Hitler: A Film from Germany
, 1978) present richly textured visions exploring the legacies of German
Romanticism and nationalism, controversially depicting a particular German
identity through irrational and nihilistic imagery.

Paralleling the New German Cinema, in the 1970s
Frauenfilm
(women's filmmaking) arose. Directors like Helke Sander (b. 1937),
Helma Sanders-Brahms (b. 1940), Margarethe von Trotta (b. 1942), Ulrike
Ottinger (b. 1942), and Jutta Brückner (b. 1941) have sought to
redefine the practice and politics of filmmaking while criticizing the
oppression and discrimination directed against women in the Federal
Republic. The combination of national and family history in
Deutschland bleiche Mutter
(
Germany Pale Mother
, 1980), by Sanders-Brahms, sparked controversy. Von Trotta's
DiebleierneZeit
(
Marianne and Juliane
, also known as
The German Sisters
, 1981) took up the story of the Ensslin sisters for a subtle examination
of the effect of terrorism on daily life by combining radical politics
with personal history.

The German New Wave petered out in the early 1980s, around the time of
Fassbinder's death. The political climate had changed from the
idealism of the 1960s to the violence of the "extraparliamentary
opposition" of the 1970s, with countermeasures by the state,
together with public opposition to projects like nuclear power and the
presence of US nuclear weaponry on West German soil. Many of these issues
are reflected in
Deutschland im Herbst
(
Germany in Autumn
, 1978), a collaborative project between several directors to depict the
impact on German society of terrorism and the state's response to
it.

WERNER HERZOG
b. Werner Stipetic, Munich, Germany, 5 September 1942

Werner Herzog, one of the leading figures of the New German Cinema, has
remained a radical individualist and a cinematic visionary for over
forty years. His films disturb by their questioning of the bases of
human civilization and its values. He first attracted notice with
Lebenszeichen
(
Signs of Life
, 1968), a war story set on a Greek island, which depicts an individual
soldier's futile revolt against his situation. Herzog won the
Berlin International Film Festival prize that year for a first work, as
well as a German Film Award for outstanding feature film.

In
Jeder für sich und Gott gegen Alle
(
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
, 1974) he commented on fundamental social values via the historical
account of a strange foundling child in nineteenth-century Germany.
Herzog also tackled a difficult play by Georg Büchner, from the
mainstream of German theater, in
Woyzeck
(1979). Herzog's favorite actor, Klaus Kinski, draws on his
characteristic intensity to portray the destruction of a simple little
man caught in an absurd, authoritarian society. In
Nosferatu, Phantom der Nacht
(
Nosferatu
, 1978), an homage to the director F. W. Murnau, Kinski gives a
remarkably nuanced portrayal of the Dracula figure as a lonely and
driven predator envious of his victims for their human relations. With
Kinski, Herzog also explored megalomania in
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes
(
Aguirre, The Wrath of God
, 1972)andagainin
Fitzcarraldo
(1982) and
Cobra Verde
(1987).
Fitzcarraldo
is an allegory of colonialism in its treatment of the actual historical
events surrounding the hero's obsession with building an opera
house a thousand miles up the Amazon River in the Peruvian jungle.
During the shooting of this film, Herzog became involved with dangerous
local politics, and one of his crew was killed while filming a wild ride
down river rapids.
Cobra Verde
deals with the eighteenth-century slave trade between South America and
Africa, with Kinski reprising his role of the obsessive adventurer who
perishes through his overreaching ambition. After this film, Herzog and
Kinski parted ways, as it was becoming increasingly difficult for the
director to work with the erratic star.

Herzog also has produced several highly personal documentaries in
Germany and elsewhere, and has done mainstream work for German TV. Among
his impressive documentaries are
Mein Liebster Feind—Klaus Kinski
(
My Best Fiend
, 1999), about the director's tumultuous working relationship
with Kinski;
Wheel of Time
(2003), about the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhist rituals;
The White Diamond
(2004), about exploring the rainforest in a unique airship; and
Grizzly Man
(2005), about an actor who filmed himself living among grizzly bears
and who, along with his girlfriend, was killed by one.

When a more conservative government was elected in 1982, the subsidy
system ceased to favor art cinema, even as the new technologies shaping
video and TV continued to reduce cinema audiences. Mainline film-making
enjoyed a boost with Wolfgang Petersen's (b. 1941) film
Das Boot
(
The Boat
, 1981), a melancholy antiwar story of a doomed U-boat toward the end of
World War II. The film's international success and the
director's subsequent hit
Die unendliche Geschichte
(
The Never-Ending Story
, 1984) launched Petersen on the well-trodden trail to Hollywood. In the
1990s Roland Emmerich (b. 1955) followed him, becoming a top US director,
with
Universal Soldier
(1992) and
Independence Day
(1996). Other filmmakers found support through

Renewed public interpretation of the Third Reich was also reflected in
filmmaking, as in
Die weisse Rose
(
The White Rose
, 1982) by Michael Verhoeven (b. 1938), which depicted the courage of an
actual student resistance group in Munich. He revisited the Third Reich in
1990 with a controversial film,
Das schreckliche Mädchen
(
The Nasty Girl
, 1990), which used a mixture of techniques to focus on the difficulties
experienced by a school-girl investigating her hometown under the Nazis.
Sansibar oder der letzte Grund
(Sansibar, or the True Reason, 1987) by Bernhard Wicki (1919–2000)
explores difficult questions of guilt and responsibility through the
allegory of an artwork rescued from the Nazis by a Communist and a Jewish
woman. The most celebrated historical revision was Edgar Reitz's
(b. 1932)
Heimat—Eine deutsche Chronik
(
Homeland: A German Chronicle
, 1984), an epic depiction of a village in central Germany from the 1920s
to the 1950s that was made for both TV and cinema release. Reitz's
sequel,
Die Zweite Heimat—Chronik einer Jugend
(
The Second Homeland: Chronicle of a Youth
), thirteen episodes shot from 1988 to 1992, continued the story into the
1960s. Both gained attention abroad and caused much debate in Germany as
to the cinematic depiction of memory and its relevance for German
identity. (
Heimat 3
was aired on German TV in 2004.) The particular parochialism of the state
of Bavaria appears in the work of Herbert Achternbusch (b. 1938), such as
Servus Bayern
(
Bye-bye, Bavaria!
, 1977). In the United States Percy Adlon (b. 1935) adapted this story in
Out of Rosenheim
(
Bagdad Café
, 1987), which teamed the Bavarian actress Marianne Sägebrecht (b.
1945) with the American actor Jack Palance and achieved enormous
international success. However, the most successful West German filmmaker
of the 1980s was a newcomer, Doris Dörrie (b. 1955), whose comedy
Männer …
(
Men…
, 1985) combined a feminist viewpoint with borrowings from Hollywood
genres in an international hit that set the stage for the more
entertainment-oriented filmmaking of the 1990s.

User Contributions:

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: